Kalet Leon

Kalet Leon was a PhD student and a postdoc at the TI Group.

He got a degree in Physic from the University of Havana in Cuba in 1997.

In September 1998 he joined the TI group in part-time as a Ph.D. student. The aim of his project was to understand the mechanism of tolerance mediated by regulatory T cells. To achieve this goal he had to develop a model for the interactions in multicellular conjugates. He demonstrated on formal grounds that regulatory cells grow as a function of the cells they suppress from inducing autoimmunity. He simulated the repertoire selection of regulatory T cells showing that in the thymus regulatory cells could be produced randomly, independently of the specificity, without compromising self-nonself discrimination. Finally, he has shown that the crosstalk mechanism between regulatory T cells and pathogenic T cells naturally predicts the existence of an inverse correlation between infections and autoimmune diseases.

He got his Ph.D. in Biomedicine by the University of Porto in 2002. After that he became a postdoc at the group, still in part-time because he was assigned a new job at the Center for Molecular Immunology back in Cuba.

Publications

Léon, K., J. Faro, A. Lage, J. Carneiro. (2004). Inverse Correlation between the Incidences of Autoimmune Disease and Infection Predicted by a Model of T cell mediated Tolerance. J.Autoimmunity. 22, 31-42. [PDF 948KB]

Léon, K., A.Lage, J.Carneiro. (2003). Tolerance and immunity in a mathematical model of T-cell mediated suppression. J. Theor. Biol. 255, 107-126.

Léon, K. (2002). A quantitative analysis of dominant tolerance. Ph.D. Dissertion. University of Porto.

Gonzalez,G. E.Montero, K.Léon, I.Cohen & A.Lage. (2002). Autoimmunization to Epidermal Growth Factor, a component of the immunological homunculus. Autoimmunity Reviews 1,89-95.

Moreno, E. & K.Léon. (2002). The geometry and chemistry of the interactions between protein side chains and ligand atoms in protein-ligand complexes: Applications in docking. Proteins 47, 1-13.

Léon, K., R.Perez, A.Lage & J.Carneiro, (2001). Three-cell interactions in T cell mediated suppression? A mathematical analysis of its quantitative implications. J. Immunol. 166, 5356-5365.

Léon, K., R.Perez, A.Lage & J.Carneiro, (2000). Modelling T cell mediated suppression dependent on interactions in multicellular conjugates. J.Theor.Biol. 207, 231-254.

Léon, K., J.Carneiro, R.Perez, E.Montero & A.Lage. (1998). Natural and induced tolerance in an immune network model. J.Theor.Biol. 193, 519-534.

Léon, K., H. R. Coppola, V. R. Velazco & F. Garcia Moliner. (1996). The inverse dielectric function of a quasi-two-dimensional electron gas in a quantum well: Plasmons in a thin metal layer. J. Physics: Condensed Matter 8, 665-675.